Have We Found a Solution?

"What if "Missionaries" go and do something for the native people that the native people can do for themselves? Or something that the indigenous people need to learn to do for themselves? That creates a huge problem in missions DEPENDENCY."

(If you have been at all offended by what you have just read - please, please don't read anymore.) Sending North American Christian teenagers with no construction experience, to Haiti, to build a building in a country where the most serious, non-spiritual problem that Haitians face is severe unemployment; is not only non-productive, it is humiliating to the people of Haiti, poor stewardship of ministry funds, and perpetuates the North American concept that Debbie Boon made popular when she sang, "It can't be wrong when it feels so right." I think the problem of dependency is pretty obvious to anyone who has considered it. But, what is the solution to this devastatingly humiliating, non-productive, but very popular, self-perpetuating problem? A partial solution to dependency is to turn around and go the other way. That would have worked when I was headed from Atlanta to Florida and ended up in Chattanooga. I had intentions of going home, and was on the right road, but I inadvertently took the North on-ramp, thinking I was going South. Another solution to dependency is to "Just Say No" because frequently what feels like helping, actually hurts. Solutions to the massive issue of dependency in missions include: 1. LET'S NOT DO FOR PEOPLE WHAT THEY CAN DO FOR THEMSELVES. Let's not spend $1500 per person multiplied by 10 people (a total of $15,000), to paint a couple of little single room school huts that only cost $3,000 to build, while humiliating a village of capable people by implying that they are incapable of dipping a paintbrush into a bucket of paint and spreading it on the walls of two tiny, rural classrooms. 2. MAKE DISCIPLES WHO CAN MAKE DISCIPLES. This was Christ's Commission to us (Matthew 28:18-20; 2 Timothy 2:2). Discipleship can rarely be achieved in a week or two, by people who can't speak the local trade language and don't have any knowledge of the local culture. There are exceptions, but they are rare. 3. LET'S NOT SPEND PRECIOUS MONEY TO SEND VACATIONARIES. Let's not spend funds given to take Christ's Gospel to desperate, hopeless people, to send "Vacationaries" on adventure trips so they can call themselves "Missionaries." The most common statements I have heard uttered by participants from North America after they return from a typical Short Term Mission Trip are: A. "Those people have nothing." - If "those people" had nothing before the Short Term Missionaries went to help (and I think "those people" would disagree), then, in the vast majority of cases, they still have nothing after because few Short Term Mission Trips leave any lasting benefit, either spiritual or material. B. "That was a life changing experience." - The life changing component usually fades within a month or two. It is true that the United States sends more missionaries than any other country. But, did you know, that the USA is also the largest missionary receiving country in the world? We wonder why other countries would send missionaries here to the world's most evangelized country. They wonder why we send hundreds of thousands of our people to hand out tracts to people we can't speak to, to do Vacation Bible School for local churches who are entirely capable of doing it for themselves, or to build houses for people whose brothers are building our houses here. Much of what we do in missions, though maybe well intentioned, is done more to make us feel good than to carry out Christ's Great Commission. Let's do God's will, God's waymaking disciples, not dependents.

For more thoughts on this topic, please visit an interview with Brian Fikkert.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 ITEC Newsletter.